


Life finds the way

by imsfire



Series: Celebrate Rogue One characters 2018 [10]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, Bodhi is a HERO, Eadu setting, Family Death, Friendship, Gen, Hope, partly inspired by Riz Ahmed's headcanon about Bodhi's mother, sadness and feels, when Bodhi Rook met Galen Erso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-05-27 13:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: When Bodhi Rook met Galen Erso, and unintentionally inspired him to hope...





	Life finds the way

**Author's Note:**

> For week three of Celebrate Rogue One; theme, Bodhi and Hope.

There wasn’t much native fauna on Eadu, or flora for that matter, in the incessant rain and darkness.  Moulds, algae, lichens on the rocks; and tiny mites, the largest no bigger than an ant, that lived in the lichens and ate the moulds.  Slowly, over the years since the refinery was built, they had colonised its walls.

Bodhi rather liked them, for their tenacious refusal to accept the situation.  Life, once established, never wants to give up.  It made him feel better somehow.

His own hope was still clinging on just as stubbornly, but it was slowly being swallowed.  Hopelessness and shame.  He’d done everything in his power to help his family, but from the messages he still received, it looked increasingly as if it wasn’t going to be enough.  Mother was in the hospice at the Old Temple now.  He knew she’d fight to the last, but – things didn’t look hopeful.  He’d sacrificed his peace of mind and hers, his good conscience and much of her good opinion.  And for what? – to keep someone who was dying anyway, alive a few months more.

What right had he still to hope?  But the urge to life is strong, strong as life itself is.  He couldn’t give up on her when she might still rally and win through.  And something, some day, would turn all this unhappiness around.  It had to happen, somehow.

So, Bodhi, in the rain, waiting and wishing for meaning in his grief.

He discovered quite by chance that the bugs ate more than just mildew and mould.  He was waiting for the ship’s hold to be cleared and the empty crates to be re-loaded.  Eating the last of the flatbread he’d brought from home.  It would be nothing but ration packs for the ride back; but if he’d tried to keep the bread it would simply have become inedible.  Better to eat and enjoy it before then.

The mites picked up his crumbs and carried them away in a miniature procession.

Bodhi watched.  It was fascinating.  They were quite definitely taking each tiny flake or crumble, every speck of scattered flour.  He dropped some more, and watched as more mites diverted from a patch of mildewed concrete to gather the bits up.

Life, finding a way.

On his next visit, he couldn’t wait to see if it was still happening.  Hungry little bugs, smaller than seeds themselves, gathering up his fragments.

It became a habit.  Mother was hanging on, maybe the world wasn’t going to end, meanwhile he had just to keep going day by day and earn the credit that could keep her and his sisters from the workhouse; and in his lonely hours, twice a week, on Eadu, the mites were his company and consolation.

No-one cared what he did, after all.  All he was expected to do was keep out of the way for the duration of the two hour stopover, while the cargo was unloaded.  And it wasn’t as if he’d introduced the little insects to the planet himself.  They’d been there for generations, he was just – helping them a little.

But the gaunt, tall scientist caught him at it.  The one who sometimes supervised the unloading.  Bodhi had never heard him speak until now. 

He leapt up at the voice, and the man was standing looking down at him, his eyes intense and impassive in the grey half-light of today’s storm.

Bodhi brushed more crumbs hastily from his coverall. “Sir?”  He squinted quickly at the uniform in front of him.  Science division, engineering corps, the name looked like – “Dr Erso?  Sir?”

A nod of acknowledgement.  Good, at least the gamble of addressing the man had paid off and he hadn’t made things worse by misreading.

“Is it leavened?” Dr Erso said quietly. “The bread, that is.”

“Ah, yes, sir.  At least, I think so?”

“It’s the yeast, then.  That’s a mould, too.”

“Ah.”

The man came a little closer, glancing back over his shoulder to check if anyone was looking. “You’re the pilot from Jedha, aren’t you?  The one who brought today’s kyber shipment?”

“Yes, sir.” Bodhi still wasn’t sure if he was going to end up on a charge, but it – didn’t look like it?  He hoped.  Dammit, he’d kept his head down successfully for all these months, kept this job that was the only thing feeding his family against all the odds; surely his last thin thread of luck wouldn’t break now?

Sweet Life, but Dr Erso was thin. Almost as thin as Mother was getting, the last time he saw her.

“Why are you feeding the maliora bugs?”

They had a name, then.  Well, a scientist would know these things. “Ah –“ he could deny that he was, of course; _I’m not feeding them, sir, I just dropped a few scraps by accident._   It would be easily said, and he had a feeling it would terminate all connection between them, right away.  But if he wasn’t in trouble, then – “They – I don’t know, they cheer me up?  They’re so tiny and so determined to stay alive.  I’m – things aren’t very good for me right now, at home, and it – it just helps me.  Reminds me to keep hopeful, I guess.”

“Hopeful,” says Dr Erso after a pause.

_Well, yes, it probably does sound idiotic to someone with a brain capable of working here.  The hells with it._

“Yeah.  Because life finds a way,” Bodhi said.

He meant it for more than just his family, though he wasn’t going to tell the man that.  The whole galaxy seemed broken right now but somehow – somehow – life had to find a way.

Dr Galen Erso smiled.

**

They talked every two days, when his ship arrived; sometimes no more than a greeting, sometimes spending twenty minutes or more together.  It wasn’t like anyone else he knew; Dr Erso never tried to shape the conversation or to show off his scientific ego, didn’t tell Bodhi what to think, didn’t bully him or expect his complaisance while bullying anyone else.  He seemed genuinely to have wanted someone to whom he could say _The rain is lighter this week, it seems to be a bi-monthly cycle_ and _I notice the yellow lichen has fruit bodies now but not the grey or the blue one yet._

It was almost as if he’d wanted a friend.

Mother died.  Dharini commed him halfway into a trip, and he had to fly on to Eadu and make his delivery, knowing by the time he was home, she would have been buried and he would never see her again.  His sister said _She asked for you_ ; and then _I don’t blame you, Bo, we know you can’t get here in time_.  But her voice was cold and bleak and there didn’t seem to be much in it that didn’t make Bodhi blame himself.  Mother had asked for him and he hadn’t been there.

_I don’t blame you, you shouldn’t blame yourself._

What had he been clinging on to hope for, again?

**

“You’re a good man, Bodhi.”   Dr Erso – no, Galen, he’d insisted hoarsely on being addressed by his given name, _To make it clean again_ , he’d said – Galen stood in the shadows, staring down at something in his hand.  Outside, the eternal rain thundered down in the dark, and the porters and droids laboured on, re-loading the cargo hold.  Beside them on the damp wall, the mould patches were spreading, though the maliora bugs nibbled on, unrelenting.

He opened his hand slowly.  A data-card?  No, a holo-chip, by the looks of it.  Bodhi stood up, pulled out of his listlessness by the look of hungry despair bent upon him.  What was this?

“Listen –“ Galen bent forward, his voice dropping till the sound of the rain almost masked it. Held out his hand. “You’ve given me hope again, when I thought there was none.  You were right, life finds the way.  You’ve let me hope that maybe we can make things right again.  Do you think you have the courage to stand up, now, and do what’s right?  Do I have that courage?” He took a breath and let it out, like a sigh, and the rain rolled down his tired, thin face.  He held out the data-chip. “Bodhi, I need your help...”


End file.
